JNC

I know it's not necessarily your opinion PeterS and you're just quoting what a lot of people think, but as someone who lives in a 'regional city' I don't think there as much disposable income as people seem to think, at least now. While yes, rents and house prices are less than London, this by no means equates to 'affordable', and they have steeply risen meaning much less disposable income generally as more is going on these essentials. Coupled with generally lower wages, and the price of food/eating out and household bills not differing that much, and public transport generally costing more than London (proportionality to distance certainly) I don't think the average person outside London has more disposable income than in London, it would either be roughly the same or actually even less. Nonetheless I'm glad to see more productions touring to 'regional cities', but only if the prices are reasonable. It will be frustrating if due to poor sales they think there isn't the interest for this outside of London, when that won't necessarily be the case.

Is Manon the only Winter production? Or is swan lake casting coming later? I think for me I'll deviate from the favourites so far and think given they are given matinees as well Hayward/Sambe and then depending on seat availiability perhaps Osipova/Clarke as well. I really enjoyed Osipova/Clarke in Giselle so hoping they'd be equally as dramatic/moving in Manon, and Hayward is meant to be perfect in this role and the Magri/Campbell supporting cast looks great also. I imagine it will be three years when Manon comes round again, at which point I will prioritise Kaneko, hopefully with Bracewell or again with Muntagirov so I'll await reviews of their performance.

personal opinion but I agree. In fact I’d forgotten I’d even seen him live until this thread reminded me! (And I follow him on Instagram so many opportunities to have been reminded!) I really wish Hayward had been paired with Corrales but I suppose his injury put paid to that. Who was her DG last time? I’m not sure about her and Sambe as a chemistry combo - perhaps others (those who saw Like Water for Chocolate) might give their opinions? Hayward is meant to be an excellent Manon and I missed her last time but I’m not sure about her and Sambe - if it was with Campbell or Bracewell (or Corrales of course) I know it would be great.

Thanks to those who reviewed the gala as I couldn’t make that, have enjoyed reading various thoughts. on a personal level I’m glad I prioritised Jewels over the Gala - when they came out with the selection for it I guessed it may be hit or miss for me (and the ones I knew I’d like I had seen previously) and comments align with what I would have thought myself I imagine (although I seem to enjoy Tanowitz a lot more than everyone on here as I loved Dispatch Duet, having said that I didn’t get on too well with Secret Things). As for the concept of celebrations being looking forward or looking back, I can see both sides. What I do think though is if some of the older pieces aren’t going to be shown again as the company is moving in a different direction, surely they should be shown at an anniversary celebration precisely because of this and to give them a proper goodbye? Ideally I suppose you’d have two programmes - one a celebration of the last X number of years and another a looking forward featuring existing and new choreographers that will create works for the company going forward (and or choreographers whose work will be acquired). I was disappointed with the RB’s Diamonds Bill being including a lot of “looking forward” works so my personal preference is always to celebrate the history and heritage!

Agreed! Maybe I should bite the bullet and just take a similar approach now. It’s not only the railing but they have some sticking out bits of scaffolding (for lack of a better word), which also really get in the way as they jut out quite far. I really do wish ENB went elsewhere other than the coliseum (I know they do sadlers wells for their more contemporary offerings).

I think I can only make one date of this anyway, but I’m curious to whether based on previous experience there may be ticket offers closer to the time? I have really mixed feelings about the coliseum - I hate that in their highest section (the cheapest) that barrier is a real eyesore. But not sure I can justify to pay to go a row down as in the past if tickets have sold they just bump everyone down and close off the top. It would be a bit of a kicker to have paid more to sit one level down only for others to get a free upgrade!

It was just a guess. I imagine the curtains will stay, more for cost reasons rather than anything else, until they’re worn down!

Is it to announce Charles as patron of RB? Currently is it still listed as former Queen Elizabeth (or something along those lines). Or maybe Queen Camilla? and some new curtains perhaps?

Well they’ve still not released the Ashton triple from a year ago on either streaming or DVD with no plans to do so have they? Agree with @zxDaveM - too many long runs of MacMillan and the Tchaikovsky three. I would sort of accept this if they had other diverse programming alongside but alas.

Well tonight was a lovely, beautiful evening and I’m so glad I made an effort to see this. I’d only seen Diamonds previously as part of the ROH bill last year and I have to say it was great seeing Jewels in full, as Balanchine intended. First Emeralds, I wasn’t sure what to expect but this turned out to be my favourite of the evening. To me (someone who hasn’t seen this before and has a non technical eye) this was danced perfectly. It was beautifully lyrical, soft, and made me realise we really are lacking in lyrical/romantic repertoire and I want to see more of it. The costumes were beautiful and sparkled wonderfully, and the costumes, set, dancing, choreography, music was just in perfect harmony. It’s really hard to say more than that as with abstract non-plot ballet I can’t describe particular movements but I just loved every minute of it. I thought Sharni Spencer was just wonderful. I thought whoever coached them must have done a very good job and the dancers all seemed to really embody the lyrical style so well. Rubies - this felt very fun and I loved that it captured Balanchine doing something new but you can see the beginnings of choreographers like MacGregor and Forsythe in these movements. The tall girl role was just fabulous and danced brilliantly and it was so quirky and fun. The audience seemed to really enjoy it with lots of applause and some laughs(popular opinion I sense preferred this to Emeralds). my one minor gripe was I wonder if it could have been danced a little faster at points, and I wished some of the pas de deux dancing was a little spikier/sharper/sexier? But I’ve not seen this previously so it may not be a technique/style issue and more my preference. Overall though smashing performance. Diamonds - a beautiful piece but the opening scene I find a little dry. But I loved the pas de deux, with echoes of the Swan Lake Act 2 pas de deux, and then the following scene with four female dancers replicating some choreography from Raymond I think, or the Czardas in Swan Lake, and the dreamy music. And the grand finale which mirrors Sleeping Beauty Act 3 in both music and choreographic nods. I have to say I prefer Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial and Symphony in C for his “white” classical pieces but I would happily watch Diamonds (and indeed Jewels in its entirety) many, many more times in future. I thought Australian Ballet were a very strong company (in character and technique) and am very pleased they are here and perhaps they will return soon! (And would love to see Jewels return into RB rep soon). For fun I thought about some dream RB casting for Jewels: Emeralds Hayward/Bracewell (or if anyone Morera please) Rubies Tall girl - Melissa Hamilton or Yasmine Naghdi. I also think Kaneko would be very good here too. couple - O’Sullivan and Sambe or McRae. Maybe also Luca Acri. I know Sarah Lamb has also danced this and could see that, to be honest I think lots of principals would suit this role! Diamonds well of course Nunez and Muntagirov, but I also think Kaneko and Clarke, Naghdi and Ball, again a wealth of talent here in the current company. As an aside the programme had lots of nice pictures and was very informative. It’s through the programme I got the hint to look out for Swan Lake/Raymonda/Sleeping Beauty and I got lots of internal ballet satisfaction from picking this up (which I hadn’t previously noticed in Diamonds last year) so it really demonstrated the value of good articles in programmes! Overall an absolutely wonderful evening. I hope it’s not another 35 years before Australian Ballet is back here, or indeed before we see Jewels again! Would love to see Jewels in the 24/25 rep, or failing that certainly more Balanchine, he really is a genius. Oh and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia were excellent also! I’m not musical but they just created a wonderful atmosphere and to my ears not a note wrong.

In short yes. Not all of this is down to the increased prices as it’s also because I’ve moved out of London. And due to programming. But the price increase is undeniable. DQ - have only booked one ticket for this, because I’ve not seen osipova in the role. If prices were more favourable I would have also liked to have seen Kaneko/Bracewell and or Magri/Corrales and would have made an effort for matinee performances in particular. But I can’t really justify the cost of trains (and additional accommodation) to pay £50+ to sit mid amphi. So in theory, 3 tickets is now only 1. Dante Project - I would have made an effort to see this again and it’s not as horrendously priced as others. But I simply am annoyed by their whole strategy and didn’t like Dante enough to spend £100+ on a round trip for mid amphi again at the matinee so haven’t booked at all. The Cellist - this is priced “reasonably” but I haven’t booked as I’m not interested enough in the programme. To be honest even if I lived in London I might give this a miss unless I picked up a good SCS Nutcracker - no tickets. A combination of both having seen this a few times now and it not being in my top ballets means I won’t pay these prices. If I lived in London I would have maybe treated myself to one amphi performance but it’s not justifiable with travel and potential hotel costs. It’s very sad because I used to book to see each performance at least once, to have only booked one performance for the whole season is shocking for me. Part of it is because of additional travel/hotel costs now I’m no longer in London, and part of it is also due to the programming not fully appealing to me this time. But it’s undeniable a large part of it is due to ticket price increases. For example I made an effort to see multiple performances of Cinderella and Giselle and adjusted my pattern away from central amphi more to the sides (but not slips) to afford this. But now they’ve hit those seats as well. Looking ahead I would have tried to have seen a Winter’s Tale as I’ve not seen it before, but I’ve already decided I won’t book for it if it’s priced like DQ/Manon, and I’m less willing to give things a go to support ROH now. I also wouldn’t bother at all with Swan Lake next year due to the pricing likely to be DQ (or worse!) but will try to make an exception to see Nunez as I missed her last time as she was ill for the performance I booked. so that leaves me with the rest of the whole season to book: 1 x Manon if I can make Hayward. May make a special exception if Kaneko is cast with Bracewell as well and the dates align. 1 x MacMillan bill 2 x Ashton (it will cost me but I feel I need to see one of each combo. I’d also love to combine to see Sarasota ballet as well but I doubt I’ll get a ticket on general booking). I’ve gone from seeing on average 20 odd performances a year, to 5, maybe 6. In fact, I’m almost seeing ENB more (proportionality to how many performances they do) as I’m going to see Our Voices twice and will make an effort to see Giselle also, so that’s three guaranteed performances. I know I’ve been very negative about price rises but it’s only because I care so much (!) and it upsets me that ballet is becoming elitist and ROH don’t seem to care about preserving and performing a diverse repertoire, supporting regulars and friends of all financial means to attend. Yes I know it’s unrealistic to think I have a “right” to attend as much as I used to, and it is still a luxury to attend these things but the fact they are deliberately raising the price of the better value/cheaper seats at an unfair and disproportionate rate to other seats is why I’m so cross! sorry it’s so long and much of it probably repeats what I’ve said elsewhere on the forum but if I can’t see it here there’s nowhere else!

Does Alex Beard not realise that certain seats were in demand BECAUSE they were a certain price/value and this strategy is eroding this. I really do not see any evidence in any of what Alex Beard is saying that fairness is at the heart of their policy. Only greedy grabbing squeezing every single maximum pound out of every possible seat. How much did these external consultants cost? I wonder if before engaging these people they considered doing focus groups with audience members, Friends and non-Friends who would likely have done it for free, or perhaps for a voucher to use towards a performance or a free programme and ice cream. I do appreciate Alex Beard is in a difficult position but his reply frankly stinks of corporate messaging. I guess in fairness to him he did bother to reply at least so I’ll give him that. Sorry to hear lots of booking issues this morning - has anyone contacted ROH about this bizarre exceeded ticket allocation people are experiencing so they can attempt to fix it? (I presume going by previous experience it will take ages so they might as well start now and maybe it’ll be sorted by the opening of the 24/25 season). Sorry to be so cynical but the prices just feel out of control and whilst data is important it feels pure data without understanding the consumer, and what is “fair” isn’t actually worth much.

It is an intriguing email but probably gives a less positive reaction than ROH think! it’s very frustrating for people who plan in advance in preparation for booking date to not have a performance available. If it’s something like a guest star then why is this opportunity to book tickets not open to all (admittedly maybe they are planning to open up tickets on sale for a later date to everyone). If a guest star this exciting enough to half ticket sales, presumably either Corrales or Magri will be getting bumped off the ticket, which is unfair to them given they do only have 2 performances. I appreciate at this stage speculation is probably unhelpful so let’s just wait and see what ROH say. But I think some speculation could have been avoided by keeping the email more neutral perhaps (essentially the same email but without the word excited!) as what’s exciting to one person is annoying/frustrating/anticlimactic to another!

I’m very excited to see Jewels for the first time tomorrow night ✨ looking forward to reading reviews!

Unless I’ve misunderstood looks like Manon is only just cheaper than DQ (assuming the seat banding splits stay the same) which is very disheartening and disappointing. DQ is a massive increase on previous prices (even more so than the just post lockdown pricing I think) and so I really do wonder if they are confident they can sell seats at these prices. I presume they wouldn’t want to share (and wouldn’t be obliged to) % of seats sold at discount for various performances? I’ve heard that opera costs more to stage than ballet but ballet sells quicker/is more popular so I presume that’s why ballet at this point is “subsidising” opera. For me I’m less bothered about the top prices charged (there’s an element of sky’s the limit here for those who can afford it) but would like to see mid-amphi and sides (not slips) be under £50, not £60+. I don’t mind bigger jumps in pricing as long as there’s enough seats priced more fairly that aren’t restricted or right at the back of the amphi.

Just bumping this - if no takers I’ll return the Saturday ticket on Thursday.

this is a very welcome improvement, the previous system had an element of human error - if you booked multiple tickets under one booking reference, or had multiple tickets for one evening, there was a risk that the person processing it gets muddled up. This happened to me when they put back on sale an SCS ticket I had wanted to keep instead of the same performance at the matinee time despite me clearly stating the exact date, time, seat and amount for the ticket I wanted to return. ROH were apologetic when I pointed out the error and refunded me in full without the process fee rather than the exchanged credit. Luckily when I saw the email processing confirmation had returned the incorrect amount I was luckily able to immediately buy back my ticket that was incorrectly returned, but ever since then I have had a minor stress that this could happen again as it was sheer luck I reclaimed my ticket as ROH all but admitted if I hadn’t bought it back they wouldn’t have been able to give me my ticket back. So yes, this is where AI is a win over the humans! I definitely think humans need to be present and contactable but in this instance I think this is a step in the right direction. (we could always let ChatGPT write new articles for the programmes!!…Totally joking this would be horrendous!)

The “programmes” for Linbury theatre are poor. I think for the Tanowitz bill they wanted about £4 for what was essentially a piece of A3 paper folded up. I politely declined, I would have paid 50p or £1 perhaps but I really didn’t understand the logic of why on earth they were charging that much for something that should be free. For BRB2 there wasn’t even a programme, again it was a piece of folded paper for the whole of the new generations festival (at an equally silly price). I found this odd as something I’d read on the other threads here implied that for performances in other venues they had a proper programme. I wonder if that was the case, whether ROH a prohibited them selling their “own” programme - only to be replaced by a lacklustre piece of paper… Pre-Covid when I saw the Cunningham tribute at the Linbury, they provided a very nice small programme with information on each work and some photos. It was £6, so not great “value for money” if you consider the size/content to the main stage programmes, but still a nice and useful memory of an evening I enjoyed and so worthwhile I thought. It’s sad that since then they don’t seem to have bothered. Either create a proper programme that is more informative than a cast sheet and can be a proper keepsake/reference, or give people what is essentially the cast sheet free of charge, noting a smaller production run of paper due to the size of the Linbury. But don’t take the worst of both worlds and print out slips of paper charging extortionate prices! The staff themselves have appeared to be slightly embarrassed when I’ve enquired about programmes and told how much they are in the Linbury, I’m curious how many they actually sell!

I’m shocked they genuinely considered getting rid of programmes entirely! The environmental argument is silly - it’s a paid for product like a physical book or magazine, and something that is an easy profit spinner for ROH and an expectation from any theatre/show. If they didn’t have programmes they’d certainly be marking them out from the norm - in a bad way!

I think the ice cream supplier has changed since a few years ago (?) and I preferred the old one. I certainly don’t get it every time but a few months ago I thought I’d treat myself to salted caramel. I’m not sure if the server made a mistake or if there’s two versions of it, but it turned out to be a vegan ice cream. Some vegan ice cream can be nice (a sort of coconut milk flavour) but this was so horrid I binned it after one scoop. The programmes I agree are a missed opportunity. I would happily buy one each time even if I’ve seen the production before for new photos and articles, but recently they haven’t updated any articles and the photos are lacking or exact repeats of previous programmes. They appear to be getting thinner as well! Paris Opera charge 12 euros a programme but you get much more content and photos, with clear sections for synopsis, history of the ballet, articles, previous production photos and current rehearsal photos. ROH programmes are much better than ENB which are sorely lacking in content and photos, but could be much improved through easy wins like updating photos, always including rehearsal photos of new/debuting casts, and updating articles each time.

Not sure if this strictly belongs in this thread but it is a customer service theme! a few months ago I emailed the membership team enquiring when my membership was due to expire as I was considering cancellation and wanted to know the next steps in advance rather than risk getting locked in for 12 months. At this point I was still undecided about cancelling and noted it was for enquiry purposes only. they noted I could cancel my direct debit after 22 July and no further action was required. In fact the last email on the chain even notes I’ll get a renewal reminder in July and that if o wished to cancel it I could action it then! Fast forward to today and I’ve received an email saying that they’ve cancelled my direct debit and membership for me as per previous instruction! whilst on one hand I’m impressed they remembered/made a note and it saves me actioning anything as in the intervening months I had made up my mind to cancel my membership, on the other hand I’m a bit baffled and dare I say annoyed as my email was pretty explicit that I was emailing to enquire at the time, not asking them to action anything. There’s not much point me going back now to say these weren’t my instructions given it is the result I’m now happy with but if I had still been on the fence still they certainly would have pushed me off it with this! after the increased prices, poor communication, discounted offers only sent to some “friends” and not others, this is the cherry on the cake!

Friday ticket now taken, Saturday still available.

Friday 4 August 7.30pm SCS D36 £10 Saturday 5th matinee 1.30pm Amphitheatre H58 £41 please message me if interested!

Good point @Emeralds, I hope I’m not being harsh on the company and if I had unlimited time and money and lived in London I would definitely make a performance. I hope it sells well and if they perform a matinee somewhere I can get to that doesn’t require an overnight stay in future I would like to see them, I’ll keep an eye out.

Thanks Peter due to personal/work reasons it’s the two consecutive evenings for me so it is either two ENB or one ENB one Kyiv, hence why I’m interested if anyone has any insight into Kyiv. Thanks @SheilaC that’s really helpful. Based on what you’ve said I think I’ll stick with two ENB performances. I know I’ll love this bill (or at least one third of it!) so I think unless the Kyiv offering was great (both in quality and repertoire) I sense I’d be disappointed to have missed that for sake of something I prefer less. I’d be more tempted if they did Les Sylphides in full but if the dancing isn’t up to scratch it’s maybe moot (and thank you for your honesty on that, I don’t mean to twist what you’ve said but technique is important to me so I appreciate you noting this). It’s times like these I do miss living in London!